One Book In The Grave

wondered what he saw in me. I’d made so many mistakes in the past. Love made me neurotic, I guess, but I was ready to snap out of it.

He sat up and brushed my hair away from my face in a tender gesture. “Darling, I might have to do a bit of traveling over the next few months.”

“Because of your new client?”

“Yes. One of the partners has reached the end of his rope and I might have to take over for him.”

“Oh. Can you tell me anything about the case?”

He shifted in bed and pulled me closer. “Not yet. There are security risks right now, but I’ll tell you everything as soon as I can.”

“All right.”

He kissed me then and we forgot all about annoying clients and everything else but each other.

Over the next few days, we settled into a routine. Gabriel called twice a day, not at the four-hour increments I’d insisted on, but often enough to keep me from freaking out too much. Derek would drive off to his office each morning, even on the weekend, and that’s when Max and I would go to our separate spaces within the apartment and get started on whatever project we’d planned to work on that day.

One morning, I spent some time rearranging chairs and turned a corner of my living room into a reading nook. I’d been wanting some new bookshelves and now I had a full wall crying out for them, so I ordered a set online. The company guaranteed they’d be delivered within a week.

Clyde and I had bonded nicely. I decided I loved cats and was almost convinced they loved me, too.

It was all so normal, so domestic, I began to wonder if we really had overreacted. Yes, Joe was dead, but maybe his death had been a fluke or a mistake or completely unrelated to Max. Maybe the killer had shown up at Joe’s bookstore and something got out of hand. He hadn’t really meant to kill Joe. It was just a horrible accident. Maybe.

And maybe I’d sprout wings and fly off to Fiji for the day.

It was good to get back to my workshop and start on one of the big jobs I had waiting for me. I’d received the reference for this commission from my neighbor, Suzie Stein. Her aunt Grace was a book lover (a book hoarder, according to Suzie’s roommate, Vinnie, but she’d said it as if that were a bad thing!) and she’d boxed up her shabbily bound set of Wilkie Collins in the hope that I would be able to bring them back to life.

Aunt Grace had insisted on meeting me before I did the work, so a few weeks earlier, I’d driven out to Lake Tahoe with Suzie and Vinnie to meet Grace and pick up the books.

“She is a lovely woman, Brooklyn,” Vinnie had insisted at least six times on the drive east. “Don’t be afraid of her.”

Suzie had finally glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “Vinnie, you keep saying that, and it’s making Brooklyn even more afraid than before.”

“It’s best that she be prepared,” Vinnie said darkly.

But Grace and I had gotten along famously, maybe because we both loved books so much. Grace, unfortunately, loved books in the worst way. Her home was a huge, sprawling mansion on the lake, and every room was stacked with books. There had to be at least twenty thousand books in her house. She had every author and collection known to man. Not just finely bound works, but paperbacks from every era. She was particularly proud of her forties noir collection with their grisly, sensationalist covers.

It was difficult to reconcile everything I knew of Suzie and Vinnie, the chain saw-wielding, animal-loving lesbian wood artists, with Suzie’s eccentric and brilliant aunt, who’d made her money by designing computer games.

We’d had high tea with Grace and her friend Ruth. Grace had assured me she’d Googled my name and been impressed with my professional Web site. She trusted me to do a good job for her kids. By kids, I assumed she meant her Wilkie Collins books. But it wasn’t until we had finished tea and Suzie mentioned that we needed to get back to the city that Grace finally asked the housekeeper to bring out the box of books she’d set aside for me.

Grace wouldn’t allow me to open the box; she simply said that she wanted them rebound and that they contained lots of surprises and I wouldn’t be sorry. I assured her I was very excited to do the work.

Now as I opened Grace’s box of books for the first time, the pungent aroma of musty, moldy pulp wafted up. I picked up the book on top and stared at it in dismay.

“Good heavens,” I muttered, putting it back in the box. “Did she use them for rat bait?”

I hurried over to a side drawer, pulled out several white cloths, and draped them across the worktable’s surface. Taking all the books out of the box, I laid them carefully across the table to study their condition.

Once upon a time, the leather covers had been navy blue. Each book’s front cover featured a miniature painting behind a small glass plate. They must have been exquisite when they were new, but now they were sad and dreary. That was okay; I appreciated a challenge.

I picked up the first book and checked the spine. The Woman in White. Its tiny painting depicted a woman in a billowy white dress standing on the bank of a lake with rippling water in the background. The detail was wonderful. It was lucky that the miniature paintings were protected by glass, because they all appeared to be in perfect condition, unlike the books themselves.

I checked the copyright page and found it was printed in 1860. I quickly looked up the publication date online and realized that this book might be a first edition. I would have to check other sources, but I had no doubt that the book was extremely valuable. While online, I also discovered that Collins had written twenty-three novels. The box Grace had given me contained only six books. I had to wonder whether there were more hidden throughout her rambling home that were in need of rescue.

Closing the cover, I turned the book over and carefully began to thumb through the gilded pages. That’s when I discovered the fore-edge painting.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered. Was the entire collection painted? If so, the books were beyond priceless. The set belonged in a museum. I wondered if Grace would consent to donating them to the Covington Library.

The technique of fore-edge painting came into popular practice in the 1800s, and it was done by fanning the pages and clamping the book tightly. Then an artist would paint a watercolor painting on the fanned edge. When dry, the book would be clamped at its normal angle and the fore edge would be gilded in the typical way.

So when the book was closed, it would appear to be a normal, gilt-edged book. The painting couldn’t be seen unless the fore edge was fanned. It was a charming surprise for any antiquarian book lover.

Some of the antiquarian books sold these days contained edge paintings that had been added more recently. There were artists who specialized in edge painting, and I’d worked with one talented but eccentric fellow a few years ago. It wasn’t the sort of art you could hang on a wall and he was a little bitter about that, but his art was his master, or so he claimed.

But the fore-edge painting on this copy of The Woman in White was as old as the book itself and, thankfully, in excellent condition. The cover, however, wasn’t so lucky; it was fully separated from the spine. The back cover was in even worse shape. The leather had disintegrated, the hard board beneath was crumbling, and one edge had been nibbled badly. It hurt my heart.

“Sad little book,” I murmured. Yet when I fanned the fore edge, a sweet bucolic scene emerged of a shepherd boy and a flock of sheep grazing in a vast green field. “Amazing.”

I opened the book and turned the pages slowly. There were a number of beautiful steel-engraved illustrations throughout. Strangely enough, the paper was still in good condition, with only light foxing, as far as I could see. I would have to check the others, but with any luck, they would be in the same decent shape.

I poured myself another cup of coffee, took a quick sip, then left the cup on my desk as usual. I never drank any liquids when I was working. Spilled coffee and old books didn’t play well together.

As I reached for the next Collins, The Moonstone, I was already planning my strategy for restoring the set of six. I had several sheets of beautiful morocco leather dyed a deep navy blue, enough to cover all six books easily. It would be a challenge to resew and rebind them with their original fore-edge paintings, but I looked forward to it. I tested my strongest book press and was confident that it would hold each book in place as I resewed the signatures.

I spent most of that day in my sweats, going through every page of every book in Grace’s Wilkie Collins collection. As with the The Woman in White, most of the paper was in good condition. A good thing, because the less work I had to do on the pages themselves, the less I would upset the natural lay of